Lew - I am referring simply to the fact that the strain gauge is using solid-state amplification rather than tube amplification. Of course, that doesn't get in the way of it being analogue.
An interesting line from Peter in a 2010 Audio Asylum post:
"While there is now some interest again in this technology, there are those who will DIY with older cartridges, and even now some with triode designs. I have opted to produce solid state circuitry for the SG simply becaue it allows fast, ultra linear performance. While I am not a tube bigot, I must point out that non-linearities from such are artifacts, and that is not the way I wanted to start out with my new cartridge. Not that artifacts are "bad"....but they are artifacts none the less. I have seen no distortion figures posted for these circuits; nor a square wave response into a typical load. I hope to see some real techincal work in this area someday beyond just tube circuitry for the sake of tube circuitry."
As I stated before, my main concern is that the sound of the SG might retain some solid-state characteristics that don't go over well with me. Based on what I'm reading from Spirit and others, it does seem that worries about bleached tonal colors, less-than-silky transients and a lack of dimensionality are hopefully misplaced.
I still do wonder, however, whether there's a bias away from rich tonal colors, and whether, for example, I might feel the need to replace my Yamamoto 45 amp with a 300B after dropping in the strain gauge, a bid to get that extra iota of second-order harmonic development that might be lacking. I'm not a fanatic about the latter, mind you, but I do prefer Technicolor to black-and-white.
An interesting line from Peter in a 2010 Audio Asylum post:
"While there is now some interest again in this technology, there are those who will DIY with older cartridges, and even now some with triode designs. I have opted to produce solid state circuitry for the SG simply becaue it allows fast, ultra linear performance. While I am not a tube bigot, I must point out that non-linearities from such are artifacts, and that is not the way I wanted to start out with my new cartridge. Not that artifacts are "bad"....but they are artifacts none the less. I have seen no distortion figures posted for these circuits; nor a square wave response into a typical load. I hope to see some real techincal work in this area someday beyond just tube circuitry for the sake of tube circuitry."
As I stated before, my main concern is that the sound of the SG might retain some solid-state characteristics that don't go over well with me. Based on what I'm reading from Spirit and others, it does seem that worries about bleached tonal colors, less-than-silky transients and a lack of dimensionality are hopefully misplaced.
I still do wonder, however, whether there's a bias away from rich tonal colors, and whether, for example, I might feel the need to replace my Yamamoto 45 amp with a 300B after dropping in the strain gauge, a bid to get that extra iota of second-order harmonic development that might be lacking. I'm not a fanatic about the latter, mind you, but I do prefer Technicolor to black-and-white.